FOOD: Burger Rating App To Launch May 22, 2014 [NYC]

You might guess that the Food + Drink team here at CS is more than a little obsessed with finding the tastiest grub we can get our hands on. It’s safe to assume that we share a common goal of making every single bite delicious, and because we’re based in cities renowned for their culinary scenes, wasting even one mouthful would be serious tastebud-betrayal.

At the Burger Crawl last week, to celebrate NY’s Burger Week (in honor of National Burger Month), I met Ammar Shallal, a burger-enthusiast with a big dream: to find, rank and file every hamburger and cheeseburger in the city. Lucky for us, the plan to do this is already underway: the Burgerator app is ready and launches on May 22nd on the App Store. It’s going to make sure that, at least for burgers, you’ll never have to live in fear that a bite into one will be anything less than mouth-heaven.

Ammar gave us the chance to play around with the app at the event, and it’s straightforward and actually fun. Users rate a restaurant’s burger based on a variety of very important factors, like its tastiness, presentation, size and “accessories,” and you get to decide such things as if a burger is “yoga pants” (= a perfect 10) or such an awful sight you “couldn’t bear to look at it” (you can upload photos – I can’t wait to see which patties get THAT rating. Disgusting food is always so fun.). The descriptions are so funny I’m worried it will skew the ratings.

The bun, the fries, even a joint’s ambiance and service are taken note of, too, and each metric is given a different weight in totaling the burger’s overall score, out of 10. Users will then be able to see the ranks based on what’s important to them, and choose accordingly.

Burgerator has been collecting this kind of data for years, and the new app kicks off with all of it already uploaded, so users can go from a download to a delicious meal in no time.

Our rating for the app is definitely “yoga pants,” and we’re looking forward to seeing how the rankings hold up when the public gets their hands on it. Now if only pizza-obsessed New Yorkers could get this organized, too!